Obama's Budget is Dead on Arrival

Donald Lambro

2/15/2012 12:01:00 AM - Donald Lambro

WASHINGTON - Two things you need to know about President Obama's
nearly $4 trillion budget for fiscal year 2013: It will likely add
another $1 trillion to a $15.3 trillion debt, and Senate Majority
leader Harry Reid says he will not act on any full budget plan this
year.

The first tells us that Obama's recklessly irresponsible tax,
spend and borrow policies will continue to push the U.S. dangerously
closer to the brink of fiscal insolvency.

The second, is proof positive that the highest ranking Democrat
in Congress is blocking any action on its No. 1 fiscal responsibility
under the United States Constitution.

In other words, Obama's budget is dead on arrival, not at the
hands of the Republicans, but as a result of his own party who has not
passed a budget in three straight years and won't pass this one, either.

If Obama campaigns around the country this year, as he has
promised, railing against a "do nothing" Congress who are blocking
action on his agenda, Harry Reid and his gang of accomplices in the
Senate are the chief culprits.

House Republican leaders have already announced that they will be
sending a budget over to the Senate for its consideration, but Reid is
on record saying the Senate does not need to pass a budget and he has
no intention of bringing Obama's plan up for a vote.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke has testified
recently that Congress's failure to pass a budget throughout the
economic recession we have endured, and still endure, has had a very
negative impact on economic growth because of the uncertainty that has
created in the economy.

ABC News' White House correspondent Jake Tapper questioned
presidential press secretary Jay Carney about this last week, asking,
"who does the president think is right Harry Reid or Ben Bernanke?"

Carney hemmed and hawed, saying "I don't have an opinion to
express on how the Senate does its business with regards to this
issue." But Tapper persisted. "The White House has no opinion about
whether or not the Senate should pass a budget? The president's going
to introduce one. The Fed chairman says not having one is bad for
growth. But the White House has no opinion?"

Carney resisted a direct answer to Tapper's question, except to
say the president "looks forward to the Senate acting on the policy
initiatives contained within his budget," knowing full well that the
Senate plans no action on his tax and spending proposals.

Carney won't say it, but the White House knows full well that
Senate Democrats, especially those who are in tough re-election races
in November, don't want to vote on this turkey.

Take, for example, Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, who
distanced herself from Obama's budget Monday, saying that the size of
his massive budget deficits were "unacceptable."

Notably, the budget reviews from the Washington news media's
liberals have been among the most critical of Obama's presidency.

"The White House's budget for fiscal 2013 begins with a broken
promise, adds some phony policy assumptions, throws in a few rosy
forecasts and omits all kinds of painful decisions," writes Dana
Milbank, the Washington Post's left-wing commentator.

Even the liberal New York Times was disappointed with the
president's bulging budget, saying that it was more a platform for the
president's reelection campaign..."

Among this budget's more egregious scandals and shortcomings:

-- Obama's failed promise to cut the budget deficit in half in
four years. After three straight years of trillion dollar plus
deficits, the 2012 revised deficit worsens under this week's
projections.

-- The budget deficit will soar this year to $1.33 trillion, a
bit higher than last year's $1.3 trillion -- or $200 billion more than
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated.

-- The government's debt skyrockets under Obama's spending
policies to $18.7 trillion by 2021 -- a stunning 76.5 percent of our
economy. That's double the debt, held by investors, in 2007, the year
before the U.S. economy plunged into a recession. And $1 trillion more
than the White House projected last September.

-- Obama's proposed budgetary house of cards is built on a
mountain in tax increases -- $1.5 trillion in higher tax levies on big
corporations, capital investors, and small businesses. Much of the new
revenue would come from letting President George W. Bush's tax cuts
expire on individuals earning more than $200,000 and two earner
couples making more than $250,000 whose tax bill would rise to nearly
40 percent.

-- Obama insists that his budget really cuts spending, but it is
hard to see any serious reduction in expenditures in a plan that would
pump close to half a trillion dollars more into new transportation
projects and so-called job-creating "stimulus" spending on public
works projects. Where have we heard that before?

In fact, he calls for major spending increases. Among them: a 5
percent raise for the Commerce Department; 2.5 percent more for
Education; 3.2 percent more for Energy; 2 percent higher for
Transportation; and a 5 percent hike for the National Science
Foundation.

The most preposterous assumptions in this budget are the ones
projecting a sharp increase in economic growth to make future tax
revenue estimates look a lot better than most economists say is likely.

The budget assumes that Obama's second term will see 3.9 percent
economic growth between 2014 to 2017, a pie-in-the-sky forecast that
no economist is making at this time. This, together with Obama's
higher taxes, would bring the deficit down to a projected $612
billion in fiscal 2017, according to the administration's rosy
assumptions.

"If you believe that one, Mayor Bloomberg is selling shares in
the Brooklyn Bridge," said University of Maryland economist Peter
Morici.